


The Wound of Very Contrition

by cosmogyral



Category: Hilary Tamar Mysteries - Sarah Caudwell, Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 10:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: The Royal Historical Society seeks from all those who once worked with him a reminiscence of James Dunworthy, lately retired at the peak of his eminence, and I believe the time has come at last for me to give mine. “After all,” as my young friend Selena Jardine said when I asked for her legal advice, “it’s not actually libelous. And I suppose no one but me will be harmed at this stage.”*In which Hilary Tamar kidnaps a child from the Middle Ages; and other academic crimes which are, properly considered, James Dunworthy's fault.





	The Wound of Very Contrition

The Royal Historical Society seeks from all those who once worked with him a reminiscence of James Dunworthy, lately retired at the peak of his eminence, and I believe the time has come at last for me to give mine. “After all,” as my young friend Selena Jardine said when I asked for her legal advice, “it’s not actually _libelous._ And I suppose no one but me will be harmed at this stage.”

Like every creature forced to earn their bread by hard labor, I am not immune to the temptations of base commerce. Who indeed could consider rates-per-word and not think: _after all, Hilary, the steep and thorny path might well be easier to bear in a pair of Church’s calfskin shoes? Perhaps in a dark brown?_ If I chose, I could add another forty pages of gossip to this story and make it acceptable to my publishers so that they could make it available at three pounds fifty on electronic reader. I make my living upon the written word: and the distance between the historian of law and the writer of detective fiction is, as I have noted elsewhere, only one of style.

But as a Fellow of the Faculty of Laws at St George’s College, Oxford, I have sworn to deafen myself to these whispers. I offer you instead _gratis_ a simple narration of the truth.

No padding: no additions: only those notes which are absolutely necessary for comprehension. Scholarship is too pure a stream to be sullied even by the scattering of primroses. It is a lesson I have recently had cause to relearn, and despite the unflattering light which certain events in this story may cast over me, I am determined to bring it to my public by any means necessary. If I don’t, God knows James Dunworthy won’t.

For example: I am bound to admit that on an unseasonable spring evening in March 2058, I upended a glass of wine on him at dinner and called him an enemy to the cause of academic freedom, which, as it after proved, was an error that endangered me and the cause to which I alluded. And several days later, there was the incident with the child--

Perhaps it will be salutary for me to give some background.

My readers will already remember Verity Kindle (of Balliol)’s celebrated discovery in 2057 that nonsignificant objects could be brought forth out of the dead past, or, as the popular press reported it, that if you’d destroyed something while you weren’t looking, you could get it back. “Balliol boffin turns back the hands of time and bags her beau in the process,” to put it in the Mail’s terms, or “Why we must reject the soft colonialism of retrieval,” to put it in the Guardian’s. It is quite unnecessary for me to recount the excitement that thrummed through the wider world, the lofty hopes, the frequent and mistaken references to the observer paradox, the patriotic demands for the reconstruction of _bigger_ cathedrals.

In times of great social upheaval, the academy is tasked to remain aloof. Will my readers not be too familiar with the truth to expect anything so unlikely? One endured months of Oxford acting with the concerted wisdom of their oldest and most feckless trustees. Funding flowed like the waters of Meribah into Balliol’s “History” course; if in consequence there was a draining of funding from all of the colleges who presumed to study history by writing monographs about it instead of diving headfirst into it in order to plunder its treasures, well… Progress always rode roughshod over the unprepared, the Bursar explained to me, fidgeting rather. If St George’s could see its way to expanding its studies to the _practical_ , what couldn’t we do?

The answer ‘research’ was taken as an unhelpful sidebar. Comments were made about the care and years I had poured into my forthcoming book on _causa_ in the early common law, which due to the knottiness of the subject had been forthcoming for some years now. Bills were produced: expenses were listed in loud, accusing tones: demands were issued and retracted and reissued: a well of ink was upended on the table and the exact cost of the ink and table given down to the cent: and the whole ended in an ultimate demand that I find something in my research sufficient to justify a “drop” into the Middle Ages, or find any further expense reports struck out with extreme prejudice.

The trouble was that Balliol, by which synecdoche I refer to Mr James Dunworthy and the other fellows over whom he exerted a hypnotic influence, had just announced that all purely academic research proposals for use of the net would be denied until after Trinity term. Michaelmas term, the announcement went on to imply, was probably a wash as well. 

Which is why I found myself, as the vacations approached at a hectic pace, dining at Balliol’s high table with the “historians” and their babbling conversation about precaution and predation. It is also why I tried with utmost delicacy to turn the conversation to the matter of research proposals, and why James Dunworthy carped at me that if I had wanted my comparative study to be considered for time on the net I should have submitted my proposal back in Michaelmas term of last year when they were due.

I smiled at the villain as best I could. I am no habitué of violence, especially at dinner. “I would have done so,” I explained magnanimously, “but at that time I had not yet begun the chapter that would necessitate the journey.”

“Ah, yes,” Mr Dunworthy scoffed. “Your imaginary book.”

It was at this point I found that I had wasted a half-full glass of Malbec on his smug glasses.

Provocation is generally accepted as a defense in criminal law when someone has crossed beyond the bounds of decency in their conduct to a lover: Dunworthy’s actions towards History had given me cause-in-fact for an assault, but by the time of my own action, of course, intervening events had made it difficult for one to prove that academic freedom was truly my proximate cause.

This at any rate is what my young friend Kivrin Engle tried to explain to me as she walked me at an angry clip back to St George’s. “I won’t say I can’t believe you did that, Hilary, because I can,” she said. “But it isn’t Mr Dunworthy’s fault that you didn’t submit a proposal. Or that you don’t like the work we do at Balliol.”

It was and it was, but I was not perfectly sure of her agreement on the topic. Instead I said, “My dear girl, if one wants to set oneself up in tyrannical control over the means of production, one must expect that the workers will revolt,” which she thought was a very bad joke indeed. 

“I’ll make your apologies to Mr Dunworthy,” she said. “You’d better get over your prejudices fast. Who knows what might happen?”

* * *

I spent the next few days turning over the suggestion Kivrin had made. Spring brought with her a rich profusion of pollen, rain, and undergraduates weeping about impossible deadlines, and as I could do nothing about any of these things except find shelter and practice forgiveness, I was in a perfect condition to consider ethics.

Kivrin was right. I had allowed a moment’s impatience to lead to a monumental indiscretion. Impatience was grounded in fear, and fear, as the scholars tell us, is born from ignorance. If I harbored doubts in my heart about Mr Dunworthy’s deep, incurable iniquity, I owed it to him and to Oxford to seek the truth. I should look in on his methods.

But not perhaps when he was there. On the whole I thought it might be better if I timed my visit for some fallow hour, perhaps between drops, when no one at all was around.

My time came on a Wednesday around noon, when my colleagues had generally dispersed to their lunch hours and the drop schedule posted on the laboratory door had REPAIRS written in the slot, which someone with a greater experience of contractors had crossed out and replaced with GOD KNOWS WHEN. The door was open-- inviting-- and I slipped the lockpicks back into my pocket and pushed my way in.

The “net” is a large laboratory with a tent in the middle of it. One stands on a raised platform within the curtains of the tent, white and airy like mosquito netting, and is translated into the past. The designers of the laboratory declined to give it windows but did thoughtfully provide it with incandescent lights and a scattered array of scientific set dressing, such as a blackboard, uncomfortable chairs, a box of mysterious props, and a wall-to-ceiling console that still hummed with life. 

I had spoken to my colleagues about the console interface just the previous day. Seized with a morbid curiosity as native to the academic as it was fatal to my mood, I had inquired at the dinner table whether time travel was difficult to program. After I had had it explained to me that the word “program” was an artifact of the dead 20th century, I had been told that these days it was practically “point and click.” Kivrin, who was cautiously speaking to me again, had dwelt at length on the simplicity of the procedure as compared to her initial experiences. “It’s just--” She had gestured lightly, one pale finger stabbing the air. “Anyone can get used to it. I think Badri’s rather put out.”

The central element was a softly glowing net screen that was carpeted with numbers. As a concession to the human eyes overlooking it, each was accompanied briefly by some abbreviation as perhaps KIN 654 -7342. LOC 52.6309 1.2974 DATIM 104001271348 scrolled across the top of the screen. With some trepidation I hit the key marked ‘Enter.’ The screen went black.

I took a moment to deplore youth’s tendency of referring to itself as “anyone” without further clarification.

The screen whirred, then resolved itself into yellow writing on a black surface.

> CAUTION!  
>  REQUIRED COURSES FOR SELECTED CENTURY: MST IN MED HIST (COMPLETE) OR MST IN MED STUD (COMPLETE) OR DPHIL IN MED HIST (SUBM THESIS PROP)  
>  CERT OF COMPLETION OR MEDICAL WAIVER: MED LAT LANG PROF; FIRST AID  
>  REQUIRED COURSES FOR SELECTED LOCATION: N/A  
>  CERT OF COMPLETION OR MEDICAL WAIVER: MID ENG LANG PROF; HIST BRIT ISLES 1330-1550; TIME TRAV SAFETY III; EAST ANG CART  
>  CHECK ALL CERTIFICATES BEFORE ALLOWING TRAVEL  
>    
>  **REMEMBER: EVERY CENTURY’S A TEN FOR RETRIEVAL!**

My heart swelled with mingled indignation and delight. On the one hand it was clear that the destination requested was of great interest to me. I had once or twice led the tutorial here carelessly abbreviated as HIST BRIT ISLES 1330-1550 and my students had emerged from its auspices filled with the fire of historical inquiry. The lucky traveler who stepped beyond the veil would find themselves in the heart of my period, drifting casually past the drafting of the Englishry Act, wandering through the hedges in the Case of the Thorns, hobnobbing, perhaps, with the likes of William of Ockham and Richard III, although not at the same time.

On the other hand, neither among the REQUIRED COURSES for SELECTED CENTURY nor for LOCATION did I see DPHIL IN LAW. Were our graduate students not researchers? Had they not slaved as the MED HIST students had over MED LAT and MID ENG, not to mention MID FRE and LAW FRE to boot? Had we when young not wept as the other historians did in sorrow at the loss of the dead past, and then in joy at its glorious resurrection through TIME TRAV? When at last would the Faculty of Law receive our equal due? 

I stabbed at the ‘Enter’ key again from hell’s heart. The screen turned over its display. It now said READY. HIT ‘SEND’.

There is a story told among lawyers about the nature of luck. It concerns the ships Peerless. Two merchants agreed that the first would send the second a bale of the finest cotton upon the good ship Peerless. The first accordingly packed up his goods and took sail for Bombay. The ship was true to its name: it arrived in safety, and the merchant disembarked to find that the price of cotton had gone down and silk had gone up; he had made his contract in the nick of time. He found his compatriot, triumphantly presented his goods, and had the door shut in his face. For, the second merchant explained, he had meant the good ship _Peerless_ : an entirely different vessel which had made land two months before with no cotton in sight. Both parties demanded judgment and, upon examining the pair of Peerlesses, the court sided with the second merchant, who evidently had a very good lawyer and a great deal of charm.

Historians of the law present the case for the proposition that where no true meeting of the minds has occurred, no contract can be formed. It came to me in that moment before the console for a different reason. Like the second merchant, a miracle had presented me with the chance to get away with something. I had sought an opportunity to visit England in the Middle Ages: the console was obligingly ready to drop someone there. I had needed time away from the constricting tyrants of Balliol: the net would be unattended for another hour or more. Should I waste the moment that had been laid before me? Should I turn coward and retreat in the face of the opportunity of a lifetime? The answer would later prove to be "yes," but I hope my readers can understand why I failed to see it. It was the work of a moment to find some brown robes in the box of costumes. I pulled the fabric over my head and hit SEND, lunging as I did for the platform. A timer of some kind had begun, but I could not make out its numbers. I tried to arrange myself among the veils and breathe steadily and evenly.

The door opened, causing a serious interruption in my breathing. A figure had entered the room. Through the veils I could see it cross to the console and give an exaggerated start, then hurl itself halfway across the room to reach the net.

I reacted badly. I tucked my wayward feet back in and shrieked “Run program! Go! Travel! Activate!”

“Stop!” yelled the figure. His stentorian accents thrilled me to my core, and I believe I should actually have stopped directly had I been able to, but the question was never put to the test. As soon as he had finished speaking I was gone.

* * *

Whoever had programmed the net had neglected to provide it with a convenient landing site. I found myself in a dense underbrush. When I had pried myself loose from thorns, thickets, and enterprising roots, I tried to straighten myself and hit my head on the branches of a low-hanging willow. I sat down immediately again and tried to get my bearings. Willows meant rivers; rivers meant civilization. Someone had programmed this drop-- for a retrieval, no doubt, which meant conflagrations, which also meant civilization, or at least its outposts. Unless I had experienced “slippage,” and was somewhere else entirely. I gazed up longingly at the shimmer of the dormant net. But historians are not made to be faint of heart, and the net was generally set to half-hour drops. I discharged myself from the thicket once more and pushed out onto the riverbank.

There were stone steps set against the mud. I climbed them and found myself in a city.

The city in the late Middle Ages reduces the historian to Isherwood’s camera. Scent lay thick as a low fog along the streets, and I hurriedly closed both my nose and, after a moment, my mouth. I could hear the clattering of carts and animal noises in the street, cacophonous birdsong, even bursts of language from the distance: all seemed to be points of noise against a background of deep quiet. The whole thing acted on my ears like a Scriabin sonata, dissolving sense away from sensation.

I transferred my hands to my ears and relied on my eyes: an English village falling away in gentle hills from a castle, walled in old stone, with another set of new walls just behind me. The sun was a gold coin in the middle of the sky. A busy, unimportant morning, with busy, unimportant citizens flooding past me to finish their shopping and their studies and their prayers as they would for the next thousand uninterrupted years. 

I let my hands drop, and unreality washed back over me again. Was there foreboding in its wake? Did I even then know, from the color of the stone or the rushing of the river, that some warning was being given me that I could not heed in time?

“Thuhast ylost thesalven,” said a small voice in my ear.

I turned and found that a child had clambered up onto the low rail of the bridge. It was regarding me with a sober stare, and I returned the favor. It was tow-headed and its eyes had that peculiar blue that is almost the absence of color. I noted with interest the fine quality of its clothes and the fact that it had somehow contrived, despite the thickness of the fabric, to rip a hole in its sleeve, which it now stuck two fingers through.

Kivrin had spoken Latin. My Latin was somewhat restricted to its written form and centered chiefly on legal formulae, but this accent made English untenable. “God bless and keep you,” I said in my most authoritative voice.

It stood to gain the height advantage. “Thart nau prayest.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” I said. “Do you know where I am?”

Children have a great and single advantage over adults, which is that, everything habitually surprising them, no individual act can greatly disturb their calm. The child did not blink. It said, “The city of Norwich,” and then, with stumbling untruth, “I speak Latin. Will you tell the other priests you saw me?”

“It is not my deed,” I said. “The year of our Lord what?”

But here I had pushed my luck too far. “ _Each_ year is the year of our Lord,” the child said scornfully. “Then will you hide me?” And it fell backward into the river.

Or tried to. I lunged for its shirt and just barely caught it as it fell, its arms beating against the uncaring air, and it overbalanced and toppled onto me. Together we rolled a few feet until we came to rest against the wall of the bridge, the child’s head wedged between my neck and shoulder.

It stopped making panicky breathing noises, but did not move. “I almost died,” it said into my ear with a note of pride. “You saved me.”

I was momentarily at a loss for words. The phrase “No wrong is done to one who consents” was apposite, but inaccurate in every regard, whereas referring to the child as an “enemy of the human race” reversed the considerations. Instead I managed to pry the child off me and sit up.

“Now will you hide me?” the child demanded. “We are allies. I go to the Blackfriars’ priory to see if I can read yet.”

Would I spend my precious half an hour in the Middle Ages with an infant, helping it play truant? Could I justify straying from my path to pursue an investigation of perhaps a small collection of devotionals, with interesting annotations? Or should I instead stay among the common people and gain a knowledge of their practices? After all, my environs were congenial. Norwich is of great interest to the tourist: rows of brick houses alternate with monasteries and churches of rosy stone, while a river which I am reliably informed is named the Wensum cuts through the chalk landscape around it to bring a sparkling gravity to any scene it decorates.

It is also singularly notable for its absence of medieval legal significance. “Let it be done,” I said, and followed the child towards the Priory.

* * *

Reader, forgive me: I am remiss.

It was my promise at the outset that I would not pad or inflate my narrative with unnecessary elements. Yet my brief sojourn at the Priory-- the cart chase, the scriptorium, the revelation of the child’s first name, the discovery of English writings among their commentary on the Patent Rolls, the subsequent pursuit by both friars _and_ priests, the circumstances in which we ended up slipping down the riverbank near the drop-- bears not at all on James Dunworthy or his scholarly pursuits. Such as they are.

It will be best, I think, if we pass over these details of narrative, however engrossing to the lay reader. Those who seek more information may obtain a copy of my monograph ‘Common tongue, common law: religious commentary on the law in 14th century England’ from my publisher at a very reasonable price.

Suffice it to say that as the child and I fished ourselves out of the thicket half an hour later, I had come to the limits of my strength. “Who benefits from this?” I panted. “Time travel is a wrong in itself.”

“What is ‘time travel’?” The child had collapsed backwards onto the bank of the river. Now it pointed up. “What is that light?”

I looked up and beheld the glimmer of the reawakening net. “The place where I stand,” I said, and pushed myself upright in order to struggle a little further up, into its ambit. I could feel the alteration as soon as I was within it, the static electricity gathering around me and the pressure in the air. Phosphenes multiplied in my peripheral vision. I stood on my tiptoes. “I intend to return to my home.”

“Your home in the river?” the child said, as I slipped back down a few inches. “Take me with you.”

I considered the child. As encounters with the alien went, the child itself had not been onerous, and its intellectual curiosity spoke to something within me. During our concealment from the friars (‘Common tongue,’ pp. 41-42) it had actually pulled its filthy jerkin over my feet and thus kept us from discovery. I could not be ungrateful.

On the other hand, my Latin was not equal to the task of explaining my ascension into the present day. I opted instead to employ legal doublets: set phrases of dual linguistic origin used to aid comprehension among the laity by medieval scholars and adopted wholesale into the English tongue. If the child did not recognize one of the words, it might the other. “Your service has been good and sufficient,” I said, macaronically. “I am of a different kind and nature than you. Be free and clear of me.”

The child blinked at me. Then it said, “You are vanishing!”

I must have seemed half a sprite by then. The specks of light had begun to resolve themselves into the shape of the lab; overlaid on the river was the heavy bank of the console. “I do,” I said. “Fare--” and then I believe I must have yelled very loudly, in whatever language was available, as the child leapt into the air like a muddy antelope and tackled us both into the year 2058.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on chapter one of this unwieldy magnum opus since early 2017 and it is time to release it into the wild! It was hhertzof who originally had the idea to crossover these two canons based on raven's Yuletide letter; everything else about this is Gogol's fault. More coming, hopefully, soon: in which Hilary discovers the terrible dangers to which they have been subjected in the distant past and shows up uninvited to a lover's squabble.


End file.
